A review on foot-ground contact modeling strategies for human motion analysis
Leonor Saraiva, Mariana Silva, Mariana Silva, Filipe Marques, Miguel Silva, Miguel Silva, Paulo Flores
Abstract
This review discusses the methodologies available in the literature, usually utilized to study the foot-ground interaction in the human locomotion. For this purpose, PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases were considered to identify publications focusing on foot-ground contact modeling strategies. As the consequence of a critical reading of those publications, some additional papers were identified and included in the present review. A total of 30 papers were analyzed, in which different contact geometries were established with the goal of defining the foot and ground surfaces. The most common geometries were based on points, circles, ellipses, spheres, ellipsoids, rectangular contact elements and surfaces obtained from 3D scanning procedures. Regarding the resolution of the foot-ground interaction, the formulations based on contact force approaches were preferred to the methods based on geometrical constraints. Several studies considered both computational and experimental approaches. One of the main limitations reported in the analyzed papers dealt with the restriction of the motion to the sagittal plane. It was observed that a standard and general procedure to formulate the human foot-ground contact is still lacking.